An ideal positioning system would work anytime, anywhere, as accurately as possible. However, often in practice it is possible to know position at each moment of time. Identification of device position, especially when users are ordinary people, may be related to services, substance of which is to inform users about certain events and, therefore, only at specific time, and, perhaps, in a specific location. Examples of such services can be: automatic recorders of parking fact with indication of exact location to stop the vehicle, or services such as “check-in”, announcing about visitor coming in the boutique. Insignificant episodes at first glance related to user movement, such as getting out of the vehicle, entering the house, going upstairs, movement on escalator or in elevator can be related to events of user interest. These events depending on service must be identified either in real time or during post-processing. Tools for second type of service may be route trackers and software refreshing the user's route.
To identify these positions, concept of a trigger event is used, which is defined as an event that initiates the subsequent action process. Example of trigger event can be entrance of the visitor to a shop or a restaurant that would result in start of sending of information to user, such as LBS or LBA messages, discount coupons or service alike. This invention provides a technique for detection of the position of the mobile terminal at time of trigger event occurrence.
Background solution U.S. Pat. No. 6,640,188, Car Navigation Apparatus Capable of Determining Entry into Parking Area, Pioneer Corporation, was published on Oct. 28, 2003. This solution describes a device that detects entry to the parking area by tracking the following events: detection of passage of turns, detection of staying out of crossroads (passing places). If both indicators are activated, it is assumed that the vehicle is maneuvering in the parking area. In order to generate a signal for each of these events, the device comprises a GPS receiver and system such as Dead Reckoning (calculation of coordinates). The advantage of this technique is limited set of sensors and ability to work in parking areas without additional infrastructure.
The disadvantage is the need for constant operation of all navigation systems, such as GPS and inertial navigation system (INS). When using additional sources of navigation data (additional information increases the degree of “hybridization” of navigation device that can improve quality of positioning), load on measuring and computing terminal devices increases proportionally to the number of sensors and addition of computations to supporting software. Another disadvantage of the technique implemented in this device is analysis of only one type of movement—vehicular traffic. This disadvantage implicates another one—its unsuitability for detection of other types of events important for the user.
There is technical solution described in US20110029277, Methods and Applications for Motion Mode Detection for Personal Navigation Systems, Mahesh Chowdhary, Arun Kumar, Manish Sharma, Kolin Paul, Mahaveer Jain, Gagan Narula, published on Feb. 3, 2011. This solution describes a technique for determining the type of movement of mobile terminal, comprising the following steps: collection of data from inertial sensors, comparison of data collected with the sets of training data for various patterns of movement, identification of current type of movement based on this comparison.
Also, there is technical solution described in US20120303271, Hierarchical Context Detection Method to Determine Location of a Mobile Device on a Person's Body, Sirf Technology Holdings, Inc, published on Nov. 29, 2012. This solution describes a technique for detection of the position of a mobile terminal, comprising: classifying the mode of mobile terminal movement by data acquired from navigation sensors and then positioning of mobile terminal using detected movement mode as one of the parameters of time and/or frequency analysis of data obtained from sensors. Combination of these two methods can improve positioning accuracy through the use of more appropriate (with respect to the previously discussed technique) filtering parameters of navigation data. Accordingly, this technique allows for analyzing inertial sensor data and other data acquired during movement of the mobile terminal inside and outside the vehicle. The disadvantage of this technique, as in the previous case, is the increased load on computing, sensor, communication and other components of mobile terminal. Furthermore, the need for precise identification of terminal movement mode as one of conditions of the technique may reduce its effectiveness in cases, where movement mode does not exactly match the set of predefined modes of movement, or when parameters of mobile terminal movement model cannot be uniquely identified before implementation of basic positioning procedure, using these parameters as filter settings.